On of the most striking nebulas in the southern sky is M16, known as the Eagle Nebula because of its winged shape. Deep inside, Bok globules, protoplanetary knots, and "elephant trunks" of dark nebula create images that are out of this world. This shot is composed for display of the inner Star Queen Nebula. The frames edges as usual are very close to N - S orientation for reference.

This image is an RRGB. 60 minutes of red filtered Luminosity frames were combined with the usual RGB data with the standard filter set. The seeing was 2.5 arcseconds in a 10 minute subframe, so was average for this site. DDP was applied sparingly to keep the brightest "Hubble Pillar" from burning out.

Instrument:  12.5" f/5 Home made Newtonian
Platform:  Astrophysics 1200 QMD
CCD Camera:  SBIG ST7E w/Enhanced Cooling
Exposure:  RRGB = 60:20:20:36 (RGB Binned 2x2)
Filters:  RGB Tricolor
Location:  Payson, Arizona
Elevation:  5150 ft.
Sky:  Seeing 7/10, Transparency 8/10
Outside Temperature:  20 C
CCD Temperature:  -20 C
Processing:  Maxim DL, Photoshop, PW Pro.